Few things loosen the grip of winter like a sun-kissed film. Add listless days and young love to the narrative and you might even forget the icy chill outside. Snow was gently falling around the Zoo Palast before yesterday’s early afternoon screening of The Botanist, the debut feature of writer director Jing Yi and as transportive a slice of summer melancholy as you could ask for. The film is set amongst the rolling hills of the Xinjiang valley, where Jing grew up, but his film is not autobiographical: it focusses on a young Kazakh boy, named Arsin (Yesl Jahseleh), and his relationship with a Han girl, named Meiyu (Ren Zihan). When, at one point, they lie down to catch some rays, parasol pitched and sunglasses on, you almost feel it on your skin.
The Botanist premiered this weekend in Generations—no bad place for a debut, though I reckon Jing’s film, with its flights of surrealism and shimmering compositions, could have held its own in one of the festival’s loftier strands. Jing frames the dreamlike story as the memory of Arsin’s uncle Bek, who the boy searches for throughout, and who we see as an old man at the beginning and end. This elaborate POV allows Jing to take some welcome liberties (up to and including a black horse who recites poetry) while keeping its footing in the Arsin’s reality. This mood is accentuated by the incredible surrounding landscape, which Jing often has shot from lower ground (I was tickled to read that the DP, Fannong Li, has a BA in landscape design), framing his actors on a stage of golden savannah with a backdrop of clear blue sky. It’s easy to get lost in.
The story primarily follows Arsin, a curious boy whose interest in botany acts as both a cultural signifier of his nomadic Kazakh heritage and a lens through which he sees the world. (At one point, he talks in voiceover about wanting to become a thistle in order to survive a challenging moment, before deciding against it as it might mean hurting someone else.) Out collecting samples for his scrapbook of notes and flora, he meets Meiyu and the two become fast friends. The girl works at a small local bazaar, where her slightly older brother takes some umbrage with their inter-community mingling. Another stepping stone is the fact that they don’t speak the same language, however this allows Jing to develop their friendship through play and exploration, where it soon takes route before blooming into something like love.
For a first feature, The Botanist boasts some heavy credentials behind the scenes: it was produced by Shan Zoulong, who collaborated with Bi Gan on both Kaili Blues and Long Day’s Journey into Night; with Gan also acting as a mentor on the early stages of The Botanist’s script. There are moments when Jing’s imagination threatens to overwhelm the film but, more often than not, the director keeps things grounded by allowing the wider world to creep in. For years, Chinese cinema has been alive to that particular friction, but The Botanist offers a novel perspective.
The Botanist premiered at the 2025 Berlinale.